


i don't know what they did to your face (and i don't like it)

by ghostwit



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Handling Of A Corpse, M/M, Post-Marineford, That's not a tag but that's pretty much it., Whoops. To be fair this draft is old., Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21649594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit
Summary: Bodies are bodies are bodies. Any doctor knows. Marco is cold, doesn’t find it fitting to be any other way as he heaves it over his shoulder, limbs knocking gracelessly against the expanse of his unmarked back.What it means to show love after the war; how to live with yourself.(You were dead by the time that I had found you.)
Relationships: Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco & Portgas D. Ace, Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Portgas D. Ace
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	i don't know what they did to your face (and i don't like it)

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny emeto CW.

Bodies are bodies are bodies. Any doctor knows. Marco is cold, doesn’t find it fitting to be any other way as he heaves _it_ over his shoulder, limbs knocking gracelessly against the expanse of his unmarked back. However his skin appears, he knows he is scarred. He doesn’t know whose table this was in another life; what gaiety, warm firelight and warmer hearts, the grain had reflected, domesticity made soft with the blurred edge of varnish fracturing light. He lays no sheet under _it_ , makes no correction to the sloppy turn of a rigid arm jolted (painfully) in the socket, lets the memory of the grief, the heady thud of man, vivid, beautiful man, turned meat stain the table. He runs his finger silently, reverently along the beveled edge in apology to the craftsman before turning hands (ungloved, not standard fare) to the work before him. 

He muses idly of craft as his hands move, almost independent of him, stripping gummy, congealed blood from the core of a wound, the stray flecks across skin peeling free with the tacky noise of dried paint. Cold, cold, cold. The wound is charred atrously at the center, cauterized straight through at an angle that leaves a stray, blackened rib hanging through the gape of its chest. An impressive display of heat, severe and thorough, but Marco knows there is nothing to study: Devastation run so deep that forgiveness is impossible. Heat births life, sprigs and curls of fire making way for the lush spread of opulence of underbrush, but the white-hot of cruelty can speak nothing of generativity. 

Marco does not ponder justice, though, as he drags a white cloth around the rim of the wound, damp with alcohol and clammy under his fingers. They’ve never shaken like this before, not since he was young. Phoenix fire sputters in his veins now, so unlike the smooth current of energy that works through him, and he feels untethered from himself as he works the wound over, over, over, watches the skin wilt and bloat under the cleanser, white baft to ash. He moves outward, resisting the urge to call forth a talon--feel the surge of the phoenix again, wild and animal in its howling-- and pierce the seared wall of flesh, expecting the slick press of organs, the frantic pulsing of lungs and heart extricated from what makes them not only Lung, Heart, but a part of a whole: somebody’s. 

His discipline is unmatched as he moves, replacing lengths of bandage, one after the other, as they darken with dappled pools of maroon and soot grey, spray bottle in the other hand sealing the hard-wrought work (more for his sake than its, sequestering the stench of death from the olfactory and letting it hang as lone smog in his vision instead) sprigs of lavender and thyme, dark and organic in their delicacy, floating in oil jostling with the mechanical movement of his wrist. He busies himself over an arm, gut clenching as he traces stark black over desaturated brown. 

Marco can touch _its_ grief, now, the irony of memorializing freedom (twofold, the jolly roger not only a sign of its brother’s voyage, but his--), freedom _it_ knows and perhaps has always, head high and shoulders tight to strain against the taxidermied albatross, all stiff feathers and a smoke-colored smear of glassy, mocking eyes, that made its home in what was _his_ chest. He had watched that bird fly, crystallized plumage cracking and quivering with solid wingbeats, scrambling under the weight of Ace’s smile. (He wonders if it really did fly, or if Ace, with his last throes of strength, threw it overhead, let the sparkle of glass soothe the crowd with just the impression of soaring.) He does not want to think about Ace. 

He flips the body haphazardly, eye twitching and corner of his mouth pulled tight with the weight of a grimace; he moves quickly so he need not think. His eyes land on its back while the corpse lays prone, freckles still dark and whole, edges of ink streaked with soot still vivid against skin gone gray, and he turns to vomit bile into the biohazard bucket at the table-side. Acid burns hot in the doctor’s throat, makes his eyes water, and he wipes his mouth roughly, a clean line of stinging liquid from his thumb to his wrist. He screams.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully the next parts to this'll be done in the next few days. Dunno if I wanna upload the next two together or separately. Guess I'll see. Forgive me for talking so much about the Most Awful part of the series, lol.
> 
> Please leave a comment or something if you enjoyed or have anything to say at all, I really appreciate 'em.
> 
> hazeism.tumblr.com


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